Human-computer interaction (HCI) systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in our society. With this increasing prevalence has come an evolution in the nature of such interactions. Punch cards have been surpassed by keyboards, which were themselves complemented by mice, which are themselves now complemented by touch screen displays, etc. Various machine vision approaches may even now facilitate visual, rather than the mechanical, user feedback. Machine vision allows computers to interpret images from their environment to, e.g., recognize users' faces and gestures. Some machine vision systems rely upon grayscale or RGB images of their surroundings to infer user behavior. Some machine vision systems may also use depth-based sensors, or rely exclusively upon depth based sensors, to recognize user behavior (e.g., the Microsoft Kinect™, Intel RealSense™, Apple PrimeSense™, Structure Sensor™ Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR™, Orbbec Astra™, etc.).
Interaction with depth-based user interface systems can seem unnatural for many users. This discomfort may be especially acute when the system fails to provide an immersive visual experience in association with natural and fluid gesture motions. Accordingly, there is a need for improved depth-based interfaces that both accommodate user expectations and typical user motions. Such systems may also need to serve as general purpose platforms from which developers may implement their own, custom applications.
The specific examples depicted in the drawings have been selected to facilitate understanding. Consequently, the disclosed embodiments should not be restricted to the specific details in the drawings or the corresponding disclosure. For example, the drawings may not be drawn to scale, the dimensions of some elements in the figures may have been adjusted to facilitate understanding, and the operations of the embodiments associated with the flow diagrams may encompass additional, alternative, or fewer operations than those depicted here. Thus, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block in a manner other than as depicted. The intention is not to limit the embodiments to the particular examples described or depicted. On the contrary, the embodiments are intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosed examples.